easydeb

Easily create private .deb packages from a list of files. Developed and tested on debian 9.7 (stretch) with python 3.6.

Concept

The .deb packages are created by easydeb with the following basic concept:

1. Create a temporary folder
2. Copy all files defined in the recipe to the temporary folder
3. Create the DEBIAN metadata directory with the minimum of required files
4. Build a .deb package from the temporary folder with fakeroot and dpkg-deb

Warning

This does not create a valid .deb package for submission to the official debian repositories. They would hate it. It simply bypasses the requirements for a real package, by adding the minimal amount of metadata required to bundle a list of files to a .deb package. Use this only for private .deb packages and if you know what you do.

Requirements

• debian 9.7 (stretch)
• python3.6 / pip
• fakeroot (available via apt-get install fakeroot; https://packages.debian.org/stretch/fakeroot)

Installation

There are two ways to install easydeb. Manually or by installing the prebundled wheel file.

Private pypi mirror

$ pip install -i https://pypi.pdrd.de/pdrd/github/+simple/ easydeb

Manual

$ git clone https://github.com/pdrd/easydeb.git
$ cd easydeb
$ pip install -r requirements.txt

Optional: Add the bin directory to your $PATH.

Build wheel

Run in project root:

$  python3 setup.py sdist bdist_wheel

The wheel and source files will be in dist.

Usage

Run easydeb from your favorite terminal.

$ easydeb --help
Usage: easydeb [OPTIONS] RECIPE

  Easily create private .deb packages from a list of files.

Options:
  --build-dir PATH  Path to build dir with files to package. Defaults to RECIPE dir.
  --out-dir PATH    Path to output dir for .deb file. Defaults to RECIPE dir.
  --help            Show this message and exit.

The RECIPE is the path to a configuration file described in the Example and Recipe sections. The BUILD_DIR is the directory where you built the executable to distribute. The OUT_DIR is the directory where the final .deb file will be saved.

Example

Take a look at the example in the repository. You can access it via the browser or clone the repository.

Files

• example/build_deb.sh - build the .deb file
• example/hello.json - easydeb recipe file
• example/hello.sh - executable to bundle

The example bundles a simple shell file hello.sh:

#!/bin/bash

if [ -z "$1" ]; then
    echo "You don't wanna tell me you're name?"
else
    echo "Hello $1!"
fi

It prints Hello [arg1]! to the screen, if the first argument exists, otherwise it prints another message.

To create the bundled .deb file, simple execute the shell file build_deb.sh. It sets the environment variables and calls easydeb:

$ easydeb "./hello.json" 
dpkg-deb: building package 'easydeb-hello' in '/opt/easydeb/example/easydeb-hello_1.0.0_amd64.deb'.
Generated package /opt/easydeb/example/easydeb-hello_1.0.0_amd64.deb.

The used recipe file hello.json has the following content:

{
    "name": "easydeb-hello", // name of package
    "version": "1.0.0", // version of package and latest changelog entry
    "arch": "amd64", // architecture the package was built for
    "section": "misc", // section of package
    "depends": "", // dependencies of package
    "description": "Hello world example from easydeb.", // description of package

    "maintainer": "John Doe", // maintainer for latest changelog entry
    "email": "john@example.com", // email for latest changelog entry
    "changed_by": "Mon, 04 May 2019 00:11:22 +0000", // changed_by for latest changelog entry
 
    "files": { // specify the files to copy from the BUILD_DIR to the OUT_DIR
        "./hello.sh": "/usr/local/bin/easydeb-hello" // installs BUILD_DIR/hello.sh to /usr/local/bin/easydeb-hello 
    },

    "changes": [ // changes for latest changelog entry
        "Initial custom release of easydeb-hello.",
        "Building of .deb package with easydeb."
    ],

    "shell": "/bin/bash" // specify the shell command used to run the commands
}

After building the easydeb-hello_1.0.0_amd64.deb, it can be installed via:

$ dpkg -i easydeb-hello_1.0.0_amd64.deb 
Selecting previously unselected package easydeb-hello.
(Reading database ... 83093 files and directories currently installed.)
Preparing to unpack easydeb-hello_1.0.0_amd64.deb ...
Unpacking easydeb-hello (1.0.0) ...
Setting up easydeb-hello (1.0.0) ...

From now on the shell script hello.sh is installed under /usr/local/bin/easydeb-hello and if /usr/local/bin is available on $PATH it can be called like this:

$ easydeb-hello "world"
Hello world!

The package information can be queried via dpkg:

$ dpkg -s easydeb-hello
Package: easydeb-hello
Status: install ok installed
Priority: optional
Section: misc
Installed-Size: 110
Maintainer: John Doe <john@example.com>
Architecture: amd64
Version: 1.0.0
Description: Hello world example from easydeb.

The package can be removed via it's name:

$ dpkg -r easydeb-hello

Recipe

A recipe is simply a .json file with predefined schema. The schema follows the json-schema.org drafts and is defined in src/easydeb. Because of the pretty self-explanatory structure, take a look at the Example section with the example recipe file hello.json.

Apart from that, the DEBIAN metadata directory section contains information about where the variables from the recipe file are used.

DEBIAN metadata directory

Packaging for debian is a very complicated task, which is for some extents documented on wiki.debian.org/Packaging. The policies for packages are very strict and this is good. It makes debian one of the most-stable distributions out there.

Easydeb bypasses most of the policies and creates only the files, which are required at minimum to package a .deb file with dpkg-deb. To avoid any problems with this, easydeb uses the following defaults:

• DEBIAN/changelog: The distributions value is UNRELEASED, which disables the upload to a public repository. Reference: debian.org maint-guide
• DEBIAN/control: The Priority is optional, because "Packages with a priority of optional may conflict with each other." Reference: debian.org policy - priorities

The following subsections describe how the files in the DEBIAN directory are created. The notation [name] in this section refers to the value defined in the recipe file.

DEBIAN/changelog

The following template will be used.

[name] ([version]) UNRELEASED; urgency=low binary-only=yes

# for change in [changes]:
  * [change]

 -- [name] <[email]>  [created_by]

DEBIAN/compat

The required debhelper version and the file content is 11.

DEBIAN/control

The following template will be used.

Package: [name]
Version: [version]
Depends: [depends]
Section: [section]
Priority: optional
Architecture: [arch]
Installed-Size: [size] # dynamic attribute
Maintainer: [name] <[email]>
Description: [description]

DEBIAN/copyright

This file will be empty.

License

The MIT License - see LICENSE file.